


Rub My Duckie

by tawg



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: sassy_otp, M/M, Sassy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-26
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam finds <a href="http://giveaduck.com/image/cache/data/duck_02-500x500.jpg">a rubber ducky</a> in the bathroom. Written for a Sassy_OTP prompt meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rub My Duckie

Dean is pressing the end call button when Sam gives up and decides to shower. They hadn’t heard from Castiel since that morning, when he’d disappeared from the room with a mildly surprised look on his face. It was obvious that he’d been yanked out by someone or thing more powerful, but neither of them had any idea how serious it was, how tense they should be. Sam can hear Dean flop down on his bed as he closes the door. He imagines that within three minutes he’ll have his mobile out, again. Dialling Cas. Again.

The bathroom doesn’t look as bad as Sam remembers it – perhaps because the position of the sun has changed, it’s no longer a dim room. The walls at least, look clean, and there’s a white rubber duckie sitting on the left hand side of the sink, left behind by the last person to use the room, perhaps left by the cleaning staff because it’s a cute, random little item. It has silver wings, and a silver halo. ‘Angel’ is printed across its front in curly script. It makes Sam smile before shucking off his clothes, and preparing himself for the battle against the unpredictable temperatures of a cheap motel shower.

The water stays warm for the whole shower, and only scalds him for the first minute.

It’s a pretty good shower, in the grand scheme of things, and Sam focuses on that instead of worrying about Castiel.

*

They can’t afford to sit around and wait, and there is no sign of Cas returning one way or another, so they pack up the next morning and head out. They drive for hours and hours, down highways and through towns, heading to the next job and hoping that it will be nice and easy, hoping that it will be hard enough to distract them from Castiel’s absence.

There’s a rubber duck in the bathroom again, the same one from the last motel. Sam would accuse Dean of messing with him, but Sam had been the last one to leave the room, and the duck had been sitting on the bathroom counter when he left.

He chalks it up to a coincidence, no weirder than all of the other coincidences in their lives. Maybe there’s some national rubber duck giveaway promotion he doesn’t know about.

They get back from killing a demonic tree (and how long has it been since they dealt with a good, old fashioned demonic tree? Judging by the scrapes and bruises and cracked ribs, both too long and not long enough) and Dean washes off in the sink before collapsing into bed. Sam eyes the bath for a long, long time before giving in, and putting the plug in, hoping the hot water will last long enough to fill it. He turns the room upside down before finding half a bottle of bubble bath in the one cupboard (which he had checked three times, a sign of how tired he was). It smells like strawberries, and Sam hums a little happily.

“What the fuck are you doing in there?” Dean yells from the main room.

“Taking a bath,” Sam yells back.

“... Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

Sam sinks into the half-full tub, and sighs happily as some of the dirt comes away from his skin. “I’d offer to leave you the water, but you really don’t want it.”

“Damn straight,” Dean calls back, his voice growing softer and Sam knows that his brother is falling asleep. “I know where you’ve been.”

Sam slouches back into the water, his knees sticking out and he knows that eventually he’ll have to give up trying to fit his legs into the tub altogether and rest his feet on the far end. But it’s been so long since he’s been able to indulge in such a luxury. He sighs happily, and scoops some of the cheap, squeaky bubbles up in one hand, raising them to the rubber duckie in a mock toast and then blows them across the room.

*

The rubber duck in the third bathroom is no surprise. Mainly because Sam had packed the duck from the last bathroom and taken it with him. In this line of work, it pays to be superstitious. And if a duck is going to bring him bathroom-luck, Sam is damn well going to take advantage of that.

“Any word yet?” Sam yells through the closed door as he strips off his shirt and kicks off his boots.

“Nada,” Dean yells back, and then Sam can hear the click-hum-babble of the television turning on.

Still no word from Cas. But at the same time, there’s been no increase in angels trying to kill them. Or demons, for that matter. Sam wonders if maybe Cas has been called off to a council of war or something, and the apocalypse has been put on pause for the moment. Dean is keeping his thoughts to himself, excluding one muttered, “If he’s ditched us for some chick I _swear..._ ”. Sam doesn’t like that idea much either, but he keeps his thoughts on the matter to himself.

There’s another bath in this motel room, and there’s even a row of little bottles against the wall on one side – some bath oils, bath salts, bubble bath, something that may be a bath bomb. No conditioner, but the shampoo is mild and smells like melon and orchid. It makes Sam think about Castiel, about whether that perpetually mussed hair would be soft to touch, whether Castiel would be confused and stiff if Sam were to wind his fingers through that dark hair, or if he would tilt his head back, pressing into the touch, looking at Sam with that intense gaze turned lazy by lowered eyelids. He wonders what Cas smells like, under the dirt and sweat and blood and sulphur of the work they do.

Sam melts back into the warm water and enjoys a scent that has everything to do with indulgence and nothing to do with the world ending. He doesn’t even bother to hope that it will wash off and save him from Dean’s teasing. There’s a little more leg room in the bath, and the water stays hot right up until Dean starts banging on the door, asking Sam what the hell he’s doing in there.

Sam wipes the condensation from the steam off the duck when he’s done, and sticks it back into his duffel bag. Dean can find his own bathroom good luck charm.

*

“Damnit, Cas, where the hell _are you?!_ ”

Sam pulls a face at Dean’s voice, audible even over the volume of the shower. It’s a magnificent shower. White tiles and a glass door – no freaking shower curtain to fight off. Instead of having a hot and cold tap, it has one for temperature and one for pressure. There is shampoo, and conditioner, and exfoliating body wash that smells like lime, and Sam is totally going to steal all of them when they check out.

Dean is really working himself up, cussing Cas out to his voice mail. Sam picks the rubber duckie up, and delicately places a finger and thumb over where he assumes a duck’s ears will be. He stares at the duck, its wings and halo, and creepy little ducky grin.

“I hope you’re okay,” he says quietly, and let his words get washed away with the suds.

*

Sam sits on his bed, trying to get gore out from under his fingernails with Dean’s toothbrush. Serve Dean right for grabbing the first shower and spending what must be nearly an hour in there. Serve Dean right for ignoring the signs and saying “It’ll be fine. Iron kills everything, right?” Serve Dean right for running in and nearly getting his head torn off by a fucking manticore.

A manticore. Who even knew _they_ were real?

“If you flood those stiches, I’m not re-doing them!” Sam yells towards the bathroom. Dean’s only response is to crank the volume of his shower karaoke session.

Sam flops back onto his bed, intending to sulk, but then has to squirm and flail about to get something hard and obnoxious out from under the small of his back. He frowns at the rubber duckie. “You’re not being nice to Dean, are you?” he asks it. “You’re _my_ duck.”

There’s a screech from the shower, one that Sam recognises as the _‘Fuckohfuck where did the hot water gooo?’_ noise.

He gives the duck a sceptical look.

*

“I say we burn it.”

“That’s your response to everything.”

“It’s a magic duck. That is never going to be something that ends well. We burn it.”

“It’s not like it’s evil,” Sam protests. “And how many crappy bathrooms have we had to put up with over the years? We don’t deserve something nice for a change?”

“Magic does not do ‘nice’, Sam. Magic lulls you into a sense of security and then fucks your shit up.”

“I think we should wait and let Cas or Bobby check it out.”

“Bobby is on the other side of the country,” Dean replies. He doesn’t mention Cas. It’s been three weeks. “We burn it.”

Sam huffs out a petulant sigh. “How about we have this conversation _after_ we go grave robbing. In the rain. In November.”

Dean gives the duck a speculative look. “Yeah,” he says. “Alright. One last shower for the road.”

*

Sam sinks down into the hot water, his knees poking out into the muggy steam of the room. He’s cleaner than he has felt in a long time, scrubbed under the shower and washed until he was sparkling before filling the tub up and settling in for one last, long, glorious soak. He lets his head rest back against the edge of the tub, and lets his mind wander. The duckie bobs gently among the islands of foam scattered across the top of the water.

He wonders where Castiel is, if he’s okay. Sam doesn’t pray in the sense of getting to his knees with his hands folded together, _‘Our lord, who art in heaven...’_ But he closes his eyes, and hopes with everything he has. That Castiel is okay. That Castiel will come back to them. That Sam will see those blue eyes and feel that electric charge that Cas always had about him, that makes the hair on Sam’s arms stick up and makes him shiver.

The rubber duck bumps against Sam’s knee, and he nudges it away, sending it twirling slowly across the hot water.

Sam indulges the thoughts that he’d always kept in check when Castiel was around – thoughts about the shape of his lips and the way Sam always paid so much attention to everything the angel said because sometimes his inflection meant that his tongue would rest against his teeth for moments at a time, a flash of wet pink against clean white, behind cracked red. Thoughts about the way Castiel crackled with power even as he was being stripped of it, of the way he was always tight and stern or fluid and angry and Sam never knew if he wanted to calm Castiel down or get shoved up against a wall, held in place by angelic strength and hands that weren’t criss-crossed with scars.

Sam’s hand is on his cock without any direct instruction. Loose and gentle strokes that are completely asynchronous with the images Sam plays out in his head. Bodies shoved against walls, hands grasping and hips arching, and mouths meeting in wide, desperate, angry kisses. Sam can feel the warm water against his skin and the rough bite of brick at his back, and the distracting bump of the duckie against his chin. He grabs it with his free hand, and holds it tight, rolling his hips and fucking into his own hand, but with his eyes closed it’s Castiel’s hand, and he’s being jacked without delicacy or mercy. His hands are gripping Castiel’s shoulders through too many layers of clothes as he gasps through furious kisses. “I thought you...”

Castiel would growl, biting against Sam’s neck and the rasp of stubble would make the skin there hot and perfect. “I never left you,” Cas would say, would growl with that deep rumble that was all business, the one that made demons quake in their boots and Sam’s cock twitch every time he heard it. “I was always-”

And then Sam is coming, grabbing his cock and gripping the duckie, and his stomach clenching as he hisses _“Cas,”_ though clenched teeth.

And, in the most confusing moment of Sam’s life to date, there are suddenly two people in the bathtub and Sam’s hand is wrapped around something that isn’t a duckie and is very clearly a wrist. He’s also being kissed by a mouth that is clumsy and intent, the click of teeth and scrape of stubble, and that at least distracts Sam momentarily from the fact that two bodies really do not fit in the tub _at all_.

And then Castiel is climbing out of the bath, fully dressed and soaking wet, with clouds of bath foam sticking to him at various positions. He tears the door open, and Sam has just a moment to catch sight of the sword in Cas’ hand before the situation catches up with him and he has to fight the urge to drown himself out of sheer mortification.

There’s probably more than just bubbles stuck to that trench coat.

*

Sam eventually makes it out of the bath, towel wrapped around his waist and cheeks flaming. Dean is sitting on Sam’s bed, staring out the motel window with a gun half-way through cleaning on the sheets (which Sam will bitch about later) and a grin on his face.

“The duckie was Cas,” Dean says.

“Yeah.”

“It was one of Gabriel’s tricks.”

Sam looks at his brother in surprise.

“The angel mud-wrestling match in the parking lot is a bit of a giveaway.”

Sam moves to stand by Dean. Castiel’s sword is stuck in the mud halfway between the motel, and the spot where Castiel is sitting on the middle of Gabriel’s stomach, grinding a handful of mud into his brother’s face. Gabriel has a hand on Castiel’s jaw, trying to force him away. Cas has Gabriel’s snapping-hand gripped in a fist, and Dean has his phone out, taking a picture.

“If this turns into a hair pulling match,” he comments, “I’m going to have to learn how to take video with this thing.”

Gabriel catches sight of them watching, and flails for help. Castiel takes the opportunity to shove mud into Gabe’s mouth.

“Cas looks like he’s having fun,” Dean says, brotherly pride in his voice.

And he does. With mud on his face, and bubbles in his hair. “I’m going to put pants on,” Sam says.

He knows that nothing will be resolved, not anytime soon. That’s not the Winchester way. But his lips still tingle, and he’s pretty sure that at the very least, he’ll have a significant lack of cold showers in his future.


End file.
